To date, the FCC has refereed the ongoing feud between the net neuts and the anti-net neuts. But that may be changing.
Over the weekend, the new chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, said the organization may start to enforce a kind of net neutrality alongside the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC.
"In a …

Huh? Say what?

Hahaha, MORE competition, yeah right...

This made me go What? The only two ISPs in my area are Qwest DSL (I get 400K if I am lucky) and Broadstripe, which is currently imploding (Filed for Chapter 11 last year, struggling to stay afloat). Annoys me to no end since Cuntcast is currently offering 50/5 mb 2 blocks away.... And this is a big city (Seattle, WA, USA

I also wish they would stop saying megbit, kilobit, etc, since you will have to divide it by 8 and then again by 1.024 to account for the Kilo / Kibi difference...

That bit does this for this one.

> "He acknowledged that ISPs should be allowed to charge more for more bandwidth, but he also insisted that consumers should be properly notified beforehand. "You can't just surprise someone with a bill."

<hairy-eyeball>

One takes it that the "can't" in this case is an expression of a newly-reconstituted FTC policy-and-*permission* set that in no way reflects on the *ability* of the people Still Left Standing with the bill-printing machines to Just Do Whatever just like When Dubya' Was King, correct? (US gummint folk do seem to tend to publicly confuse the two and then act surprised later when things reliably unfold according to the Lower and Inhuman Nature instead of in compliance with Decreed Permission to the detriment of all, one has observed again and again.)

</hairy-eyeball>

On a parallel note: I mind well the summer 2003 day that a certain Chicago bill-collection agency with business offices only a few blocks from the IL Attorney-general's office came after YT on the office phone with a large invoice for alleged telecom services that I had neither ordered nor authorized, complete with a snurly-spoken promise to have my office phone disconnected "within 24 hours" if I did not immediately authorize payment from my (near-empty) checking account to Themselves right then and there over the phone. But since passing a fraudulent financial instrument is a criminal act, I did not agree to the demand at all. (This is how and where the Global "Reject ALL Terror" John 8:32 Walkin' Talkin' InterTurtle 'net Campaign was born, btw, for all you odd-parsed square-pantsed faulty-intel-mired Terrorspy Blowback Watchers out there @ NSA.)

Instead of consenting to the crime, though, I spoke straight away with a phone company account rep. To their eternal credit, she handily passworded the account access. (Open-to-near-all is apparently still the default to this day, to that terrorspy-compliant telco's eternal oh nevvermind). So it was quickly sorted, happy, justice done by mine own first-time-for-everything hand. (That thuggish ham-fisted Chicago-based collection agency is still pounding sand afaik.)

So maybe Mr. Liebowitz was speaking of the chilling effect of all manner of now-common Dubya'-era aggressive and definitely consumer-affecting commercial tactics and "legal extortion" attempts as the above, as well as surprise billing for unexpected entertainment packages/products as explicitly stated? Now, that is Something Completely Different, to be sure.

I think I shall just go have a looksee at that notion. Times occasionally do change, after all. Must say, though: In some ways, it does seem that some few of Mr. O's appointee team* just might actually be genuinely competent and appropriately sound of moral fibre. (Or damn convincing stage artists; hard to know with certainty as always, ever since Reagan broke that gate and let the NeoClowns come pouring into our formerly-mostly-harmless normal world on his coat-tails.)

* Apart from those insider-cronying financial "officers" of his. Those ones, due to the intrinsic criminal fraud inherent in the massively larcenous "Hypothecate-and-Leverage"** method of "restructuring"(FNORD) truly do stink unspeakably at both ends.

**Spin, massage and lather until the generated bubble bursts; wqash hands of the entirety (deny deny deny) and repeat as soon as possible, liquidating National Assets as necessary until Only One Operator is Left Standing. (It's been the Rothschild interests left in such a maha-favored position as that, time and again over many, many centuries of boom-busted bubbles, has it not?)

Would ever I love to see a proper Trade Commissioner put to the task of normalizing the US "Too Big to Keep Proper Books" Banking Sector? (Two hints: Pope:Rome?; bear:woods?.)

Happiest thoughts I've had about any US administration's agency in the past decade, this latest NetNeut bit. So is this man real, or is he merely "capable" like Cheney, Yoo and Libby?

Tonight, mine's the one with the rapidly-emptying box of "Nader ffs the f NOW!" lapel pins in the one pocket. My very fine, very shiny new $250.00 one-shot "Stimulus Payment" (thank you s-o-o MUCH!) in small-denominated US currency, all neatly wrapped in a very pretty-and-fine-looking, gilt-edged and utterly worthless Zero-Recourse Securitized Fractional Reserve Credit Default Swap Derivative Instrument printed on Very Crackly Pseudo-Parchment ain't to be found in the other one, though. (Invested the cash back into the Overgrown Hobby. Wiped me own both ends plus the floor with one or another of all the Ponzi-inspired pages of the Infandously Contrived Instrument; it's all mere dunnage for the dunny now, and no stench here!) :)

Re: That bit does this for this one. ...... Posted Tuesday 12th May 2009 01:55 GMT

Nicely Constructive Post, Walking Turtle. I concur. The Great Game Hope and HEXpectation is that Barack is the Real Thing, and why/how would/could he possibly Fail and Fluff IT, whenever there is Globally Available from Space, Unlimited Virtual Assistance and Polyamoral Support .

Which coincidentally, is AIProgramMING available to All Big Picture Great Game Players and not just the old stalwarts such as would be Topically Typified as a Rothschild Banking Meme or a Papal Church Mission, which has such Past Masters having Zero Future Impact whilst still in their Present Past Form/Mindset.

A Change Environment requires Changed and Changeable Minds/Different Thinking so that Basic Output to Input Dynamically Sows Beta Output for Future Imaginative Input....... Virgin Source CodeXXXX. ....... with a Perpetually Improving Feedback of Hindsight Loop for those who would dispute IT being Perfect Imagination in Advanced IntelAIgents, which may be both Artificially Real and QuITe Alien to Slow Human Intelligence Terrain Models.

"utterly worthless Zero-Recourse Securitized Fractional Reserve Credit Default Swap Derivative Instrument" ..... It is only utterly worthless if you cannot Use the Locked In Capital Value/Latent Credit Potential. In the Capable Hands of SMARTer Minds with Alternative Thinkers/BetaTinkerers, is their Worth Transformed and Realised as an Invaluable NeuReal Funding Stream.

The Simple Transfer of Large Sums of Accumulated Bad Credit Debt/Toxic Waste to a New Breed of Virtual Capital Spender/AIMarket Champion/NINJA Venturing Entrepreneur rather than allowing the Obscene Numbers to Clogging up Dumb Books with the Price of Past Dastardly Deeds which went MetaPhysically Boom in the Busted Reality Cycle.

Ergo, and the Moral in the Tale, Invest Monetized Toxic Waste Assets in NINJA Venturing Servers and Services, which is an Interesting Enigmatic Chicken Egg Parallel, is it not?

@ Oh noes & aMfM...

It's Turtles All the way Down and Up as Well, actually. The planet would fall into the gutter and Out the Black Hole were it not so. :)

Kindly refer to the US Public Broadcasting Service's low-budget "Fundraiser Prioduction" of "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. LeGuin (or just grab the book; it's a fine read) for further introduction to our off-the-moon if not exactly off-the-wall genre and species at leisure. (Enjoy!) Tuly, if an object is desired, Help is Available.

> "It is only utterly worthless if you cannot Use the Locked In Capital Value/Latent Credit Potential. In the Capable Hands of SMARTer Minds with Alternative Thinkers/BetaTinkerers, is their Worth Transformed and Realised as an Invaluable NeuReal Funding Stream.

My brother, is that thing which is apparently herein spoken of not well known in the "More Honest Than Them Guys" Financial Services World Circles as the "Greater Fool Theory" of Financial Instrument Marketing?

> "The Simple Transfer of Large Sums of Accumulated Bad Credit Debt/Toxic Waste to a New Breed of Virtual Capital Spender/AIMarket Champion/NINJA Venturing Entrepreneur rather than allowing the Obscene Numbers to Clogging up Dumb Books with the Price of Past Dastardly Deeds which went MetaPhysically Boom in the Busted Reality Cycle."

Ah, would that such a Great Stockpile of Asset Resource were real to begin with! Alas, in the "No Recourse" field of Investment Intrumentation, there is, sadly, for the Last Man Left Holding any given item(s) of that Remarkably Infandous Asset Class, NO WAY to gain the ownership of the "Securitized Collateral" OR any "Derivative Revenue" that the poor struggling-and-underwater sap paying off that Alt-A Baloon Mortgage might actually Pony Up. As in *all* Ponzi-inspired operations (no matter how well-heeled the Florsheim Imperials of the prior-owner-cum-paid-off Seller), the One Left Holding in any such casino-grade game of Musical Money-Chairs is left holding a portfolio of *non-collectible* and ILLEGAL (because of the "No Recourse" clause buried in the Fine Print on Page 187 or thereabouts of the unlawful instrument/"contract") Financial Paper by then.

Which is why we have the "Credit Crash" today. Virtually nobody is left on THIS planet who is so foolish as to pay a penny on the face-value dollar any more, at all, even IF (bigger 'if' every day, that) there is a penny left non-extracted in the pocket to begin with(!)

As that market cycles spins, rinses, lathers and repeats the extractive scrub-down, It goes from

"Buy Low, Sell High" (in which one Great Fool[er] is paid with money from the pocket of another *greater* fool[er] to

"Buy High, Sell Higher" ("Greater Fool Theory" Stage Two) to

"Buy High, Sell NOTHING right quick". Stage 3 emerges while the Greatest Fool is sleeping in a bed of self-congratulation and Anticipatorily Drooling in their dreamy futile hope of a BIG Breakfast of Greed. Or just sleeps dead sound all night long, patiently awaiting their Big Pension Payout from their "Godot Global Securitized Securities Faceless Heartless Nudnik Financial Corp LLC" Investment Account.

But ol' Godot ain't here YET, man!

> "Ergo, and the Moral in the Tale, Invest Monetized Toxic Waste Assets in NINJA Venturing Servers and Services, which is an Interesting Enigmatic Chicken Egg Parallel, is it not?"

Ninja, of course, was born on the Chinese Heartlands when the Emperor ordered ALL weapons confiscated all throughout the land. But simple peasant farmers MUST have flails and sickles, or no more be farming farmers, and the Emperor buys his bread from the Farmer through Miller and then the Baker, all of whom MUST have tools at hand or NO BREAD. Resisting oppressive force by means of the use of Common Household Materials and Supplies is indeeed an ancient art-form of Sheer Survival.

But Ninja Servers running CyberMatic Derivatives Market Trading Software like commodity futures are run? I think the trouble with that is that by such an implementation one bites ones' own hand deeper than that of the Infandous Financial Criminal Overlords against whose depradations we ALL *should* have been struggling from the beginning. I also think that there IS NO MARKET for this class of fraud-backed instruments any more, to begin with.

With the exception of the "Too Big to Fail" crowd, which these days is apparently doing the financial-instruments equivalent of taking in each others' dirty washing under WashMaster Geithner's Permissive Regulatory Eye, there is no monetization to be had from any part of that entire mass (seven forests' worrth in gross fake-parchment weight globally, aggregating it all by my own wee estimate) of "Derivative Paper".

It's a bit Like the old Smithy's Enigma as I for one have found it. A Blacksmith must own and use a pair of tongs in their daily work*. So since a Blacksmith must have Tongs, and Tongs are made by Blacksmiths, WHO made the First Pair of Tongs?

* The which is *PRODUCTIVE*, like a Glassblower's trade is PRODUCTIVE and thus *enriching* to all, unlike any and all manner of Modern Financial Operations, which are merely EXTRACTIVE in their nature and leave the poor customer *poorer* as the result of the Compounded Interest under the Rule of 78.

Speaking strictly as one who amazed "Them All" by standing up in Econ 101 and *refusing* to accept the basic Friedman/Chicagoschool Cyber Model of Infinite Wealth Creation Leveraging at ANY but the human-sustainable 1:1 of Ben Franklin /et/ /al/ (and who took the 33-year Heretick's Exile from the ol' Alma Mater while the cause-and-effect of it all played itself out crashwards) I can only respond in one coherent way:

Virtual Money for Virtual Reality! Virtual Reality Forever for the Psychotically Financialized, I say! (Hang 'em high and let 'em dry.) HARD GOLD CASH for ALL the Rest of Us, thankyou veddymuch!

Second Life, anyone? Gerithner, Bernanke, Greenspan /et/ /al/ /inter/ /alia/ could play for days on end while incarcerated @ Club Fed as they all rightfully should be under Glass-Steagal, now much needed yet again post-repeal+post-bubblecrash. (The Fexxxers of Sadville await, Gentlemen; bring latex protective gear aplenty to the logging-in; here comes Bubba to maintain security now...)